Fairchild F-27 / Fokker F27 Moulds - Aeroclassics

The F27 was one of a raft of DC-3 replacement designs which appeared in the mid 1950s (others included the Convair CV-440, Vickers Viscount, Handley Page Herald, HS-748 etc). The Fokker F27 was also produced in the USA by Fairchild as the F-27 (note the hyphen).
Fokker's F27s had standard 100 series variants with the series 200 and 500 being
commonest, whilst Fairchild simply made F-27s, F-27As and F-27Bs.

The
series 100/200 had similar dimensions to Fairchilds standard F-27s whilst the
series 500 was longer with a 1.5m stretch (smaller than the earlier FH-227
stretch of 1.83m).

Mould One

As of December 2014 Aeroclassics have made 51 mixed Fairchild and Fokkers but something I only recently discovered is they have
used 2 separate moulds for this. The first mould is distinctly longer behind the
wing than the second and was perhaps supposed to be a F27-500? Oddly it was
never used as such with all the releases being series 200s or F-27s.

This longer mould was used from 2004 for the first 11 F27/F-27s at least and I
have three of them - Piedmont, British Midland and Quebecair. Indeed the
incorrect size of this mould is one of the reasons for the recent rereleases of
the Bonanza, Quebecair and Hughes Airwest models. Here are my Mould 1 releases:

Aeroclassics 2004 F27-500 Mould

Aeroclassics 2004 F27-500 Mould

Mould Two

The resized mould has been used since 2012 and is just
noticeably shorter behind the wing than the first. You can see this by counting
windows. In the photos above two full windows are visible unimpeded by the
length of the engine nacelle whereas below only one window is unimpeded. This
new mould no doubt shows the correct length for the shorter F-27/F27-200. I have
8 models using this mould (I forgot to include the Mesaba example in the photo
below).

Like most of AC's moulds the F-27 is really nicely made. I did note one wrinkle though. My most recent addition is the Mahalo Air example N980MA. This is actually a Fokker rather than a Fairchild (as many of the later US operated versions were) however it is a series 500 so shouldn't be using the smaller second mould. Perhaps the original mould (assuming it was supposed to be a series 500) is no longer available?

Similar the Aer Lingus series 100s really ought to have a short nose (unless they were retrofitted later on)?

Aeroclassics 2012 F-27 Mould 2

Aeroclassics 2012 F-27 Mould 2

You can clearly see the length difference behind the wing in the two moulds in the photos below: